Archive for the 'what do you think?' Category

Fantastic Plastics May Not be so Fantastic After All

Have you ever conducted an experiment that produced results that may not have turned out the way you wanted them to? Think about the things in your experimental environment that may have contributed to your "off" results. Would you ever suspect the lab equipment you use as the source of your error? Well, scientists [...]

A spoonful of sugar makes the E. coli go down…

A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down The medicine go down-wown The medicine go down Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down In a most delightful way We've all heard the song "A Spoonful of Sugar" from the movie "Mary Poppins." Now replace the word "medicine" with "E. coli" and you've got an entirely [...]

And you’d thought you’d heard it all…

Remember this post? Remember the rhetorically speculative nature of the possibility of men becoming pregnant that was addressed? Well, it seems that a pregnant man actually exists. Last week, Good Morning America ran a segment on a transgendered man, Thomas Beatie, who lives in Oregon with his wife, Nancy. Beatie was born female, but opted [...]

Building the better cow, or chicken, or dog, or crop…

We are about to begin one of my absolute favorite curriculum units in the entire world...honestly, it ranks right up there with evolution as some of my favorite stuff to teach in biology. Next week, we begin our study of Mendelian and molecular genetics. And not surprisingly, I've already got fodder for a [...]

A clever way to hide…

Some of you have asked in the last week why we need to be vaccinated against the flu virus annually. There is a wonderful animation at CNN.com that shows why--the flu virus engages in this really amazing process known as antigen shifting. Essentially, antigen shifting is a lot like a performer making multiple costume changes [...]